Instructions To Everything

2. Spell out your full name, surname first. Fill in the circles completely with a No. 2 pencil. Make sure your marks are heavy and dark.

3. Enter your five-digit pin number. If you do not own a touch-tone phone, hold for operator assistance. If you do not hear an alarm within sixty seconds, force the door open. If the door won’t open, try closing it first.

4. Insert tab A into slot 6. Color in any space marked “3” with cornflower blue. Do not put all your eggs in one (1) basket. Do not pound square pegs into round holes. Guide them in gently. Think outside the box. Then fill in boxes 7a(a)-7a(c) with your age, address, and conception of the afterlife.

6. Check at least once a month, perhaps in the shower. Search carefully for a hard, pea-size growth. Remove the hard drive with a flathead screwdriver. Phillips-head screwdrivers are awkward tools and untrustworthy lovers, like the Danish.

7. To avoid the appearance of sexist language in your writing, try to pluralize, stylize, or just tell lies. Always replace “he” with “he or she.” Also replace “she” with “he or she,” unless preceded by the phrase “he or.”

8. If you are travelling with a child under the age of twelve, strap your oxygen mask to your face first, then put your child’s oxygen mask on your face. If your oxygen supply runs low, photosynthesize. If you experience technical difficulties, weep softly, with prudence. When finished, configure the plutonium-239 into a small “pit” packed with explosives. This pit will compress symmetrically into a supercritical mass when detonated. Be careful not to apply this product, or yourself, in high humidity or at abnormal altitudes.

9. Just say “No!” If you speak Spanish, say “¡No!”

10. Take a deep breath. Think about slowly moving clouds that are white, like wedding dresses and Deborah’s legs in the rain. Don’t worry about shark attacks, terror attacks, or the inheritance tax.

11. Do not stare directly at the sun. Do not exceed the recommended dosage of anything, except Vitamin C and meaningful emotional contact.

12. In the rare event that a mature adult of the human species confronts you, stretch your arms above your head to make yourself as tall as possible. Shout strong commands with a strong, commanding shout. If you are assaulted, fall down and play dead. Do not play dead for more than seventy-two hours, or you will die.

13. Pause. Pause again.

14. Insert your card into the machine and determine if you are happy or sad. If you are unsure, ask a loved one, but the likely answer is a combination of four to six numerals. Make sure to refrigerate after opening. A sulfurous, or “rotten egg,” smell is a sign that something is wrong. Notify transit authorities.

15. Take a moment to ease your mind, stretch your legs, and exercise your Second Amendment rights. Review your work thus far. Is this the best you can do? Why won’t you settle down and grow up? Why must you constantly confuse ranch dressing and Russian dressing? Why did Deborah wait through twelve years of marriage before leaving to pursue her career as an office temp?

16. Seventeen syllables is a haiku. Eighteen syllables is an unauthorized withdrawal of company resources and will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

17. Studies show that Monday afternoons are optimal. Engage the employee in a room near his desk. Compliment his kinfolk and establish a light, collegial atmosphere with an icebreaker—perhaps a gender-sensitive joke about mulatto children. Use positive inflection and never say the words “you’re fired.” Talk about company cutbacks. Talk about hope, about faith, about weather cycles, about anything other than testicular cancer and corporate liability. Call the employee “a real trouper.” If he or she looks sad, talk about sports. Everybody likes sports. Except, of course, golf.

18. If the one who is “it” touches you, you are now “it.”

19. The addition of tritium will boost fissile power. Now that the plutonium is properly packed, the device is functional. Carefully consider other dieting options before starting a thermonuclear war or ending a thermonuclear peace. Remember, violence is not an alternative. Violence is not an answer. Unless the question is “What is an eight-letter word for something painful that is neither an alternative nor an answer?”

20. Be mindful that bees smell fear but not toxic chemical defoliants. Humans, like most life-forms (lobsters, lichen), can smell neither. God can smell both fear and defoliants, because God is all-smelling. If only Deborah’s orthodox Lutheran upbringing hadn’t closed her mind to this revelation, widening the schism between us. If only she could have diverted her energies from stapling and faxing to refreshing the stagnant adolescence of our marriage. If only she weren’t Danish.

21. No, no! Refrigerate after opening!

22. Put your left leg in.

23. Take your left leg out.

24. Put your left leg in—

a. Shake it all about. If you experience feelings of “warmth,” “uncontrollable laughter,” or “death,” the process is operating properly.

b. Bathe, floss, and move your bowels daily. Do not fall in love this often.

25. That’s what it’s all about! ♦

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